Musings of a Composer

I'm very happy to be composing on this piece again -- I started it in 2010, soon after getting back from an October weekend spent in the live-in adventure that is Otherworld. Sleeping in a cabin in just above freezing temperature, out in the sun (it warmed up!) all day long, traipsing around looking for treasure, looking for clues, solving puzzles, as the story came to life around us. I attended with my sister Lucy. It was immersive, totally engaging and captivating, and the challenges were amazing to face. Truly life-transforming. And I can't say more because maybe YOU would like to attend, so I don't want to spoil the experience in any way! Otherworld.org is the URL — check it out. The piece languished for over 10 years because I envisioned a pretty large orchestra, with percussion instruments including a music box and a marimba, and a mixed choir too. When was I ever going to have a chance to hear the composition come to life played by real people? I just got discouraged...

Amazingly enough, I found the DVD that contained the video for Water Bear’s Light in Winter performance, and Tim Reppert, my hero, was able to edit it and mix the sound, and now it is up on our YouTube channel. This is the only significant footage that exists of any Water Bear line-up, and it pleases me no end to have it resurrected. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSrdkE0TZt_O_Id2r8wcY5vSt9xD9-Uoo We collaborated with the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, whose book “Evolution for Everyone: “ I read and absorbed. Then I developed Name Music pieces that could bring to life three concepts from the book: Individual differences, social control, and expanding the circle of cooperation. In between our pieces, David gave two talks on the state of evolution and its application to daily life. David says in the talkback section at the end, that the dress rehearsal where he got to hear what we had prepared was a revelation to him, and led to him adjusting his talk to complement t...

 Back in January of 2009, Crucial Music started accepting my Water Bear trio and quartet recordings for pitching to TV & film placements. It took 4 years before my pieces were placed anywhere, but in the years since, these wonderful performances have appeared in TV shows like Touch (Fox), Agents Of Shield (ABC), streaming shows like Mozart in the Jungle (Amazon), cable TV (The Magicians on SyFy), and an indie film (In Search of Fellini).  It's sporadic, but not only do I receive the initial placement fee (I’ve received anywhere from $75 to $2000), but also royalties ongoing from ASCAP domestically and internationally. These royalties often surpass the initial placement fee amount but take far longer to trickle down to me after the shows air. Recently I’ve been on a kick to supply Crucial Music with fresh material — they haven’t placed any of my pieces since 2019, and I suspect there’s been lots of changes in their business model. There seems to be so much music created by ...